


holding hands (at the end of the world)

by Anonymous



Series: beginning of the end [1]
Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, M/M, Space zombies, alternate summary: local best friends do nothing but validate the shit out of each other, lots of hand holding, wooyoung: gamer boi noises
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 02:44:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20900351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Wooyoung doesn’t like to think of this as the end of the world. Yunho's alive, he's alive, and hell, they even get to pop a visit to the junkyard planet Utopia.Yunho's just happy that Wooyoung's happy.





	holding hands (at the end of the world)

**Author's Note:**

> me @ me: stop mashing aus together challenge failed.  
to my prompter, im rly sorry if this isnt what u were looking for ^^;; there werent any restrictions so i kinda just went wild? uwu!!

Wooyoung doesn’t like to think of this as the end of the world. For one, that’s depressing as fuck and gives way too much credit to the roamers instead of the dickheads who had taken advantage of the chaos to hoard more power to themselves. For another, it’s been more than a decade since the Outbreak first started. If this really is the end of the world, it’s a pretty slow end.

(Yunho disagrees. Reverently. Something tucked between ‘seeing the good in people’ and ‘Wooyoung, are you hearing yourself? You’ve seen firsthand how destructive the roamers are’, even though it’s been  _ forever _ since they last saw a roamer and Wooyoung’s kind of itching for a fight. Yeah, yeah, he knows that’s morbid, but what can he say? You either have to be some sort of an adrenaline junkie or paranoid as shit to still be kicking. He’s a blend of both - he hasn’t survived this long by being an idiot - and he knows how he drives Yunho up the wall with his carefree attitude. He’s not faking it, per se, it’s simply the best way to pull Yunho out of the dark, terrified place he slips into when he thinks about the past. 

Wooyoung just wants to be a comfort to Yunho, wants to give back as much as he possibly can.)

Loud beeping jolts Wooyoung out of his reverie. He mentally slaps himself for zoning out, especially so close to a landing. Cracking his knuckles, he leans over the control panel, and flicks on the downward thrusters. With careful, practiced motions he eases the spaceship (standard government patrol shuttle, stolen, duh) onto the surface of Utopia. It’s his only his second actual landing, but he’s had so much practice on simulations that he could probably do it in his sleep. He’s not about to settle for anything less than perfect with something that could go wrong in so many different ways.

The system gives an all clear, and Wooyoung’s carefulness evaporates, excitement replacing it. He unbuckles his seatbelt, yelling to Yunho, and almost trips over himself in his haste to get out of his seat. 

He scoops his pack from where it leans against the pilot’s seat. It’s small but bulging, mostly filled with tools: clunky homemade gadgets, tightly coiled up cables, coding tablet, backup generator should his body heat not be enough to power his eye scope - one that he could painlessly refurbish into something else - all swaddled together by clothes to prevent damage. 

The hatch’s damaged from when Wooyoung crash landed the ship during his first landing. It gets stuck at the halfway mark between open and shut, so the two of them have to push it open. 

As soon Wooyoung’s feet hit the ground, he’s wrenching off his respirator and inhaling huge gasps of air. It’s thick with dust and the sharp, sour tang of rusting metal, but it’s better than recycled oxygen, anyways.

They’ve landed on some sort of beach. The sand is pink and coarse and crunches under Wooyoung’s boots. What really has his attention, though, is what lies beyond. There is little natural light, just enough for him to be able to make out the faint outlines without switching the settings of his eye scope to night vision.

It’s not a surprise. Yunho had told him about it the second he located Utopia, but seeing the junkyard now still makes Wooyoung’s breath catch in his throat. 

He’s like a kid in a candy shop. The piles of scrapped parts seem to stretch on and it’s impossible to tell where they end. Vehicles are piled on top of each other and in varying stages of decay. Wooyoung swears he can see something that looks like an abandoned fighter jet out of the corner of his eye. 

“It’s amazing!” Wooyoung turns to Yunho, grinning so hard he can feel his face hurt. “You’ve really outdone yourself, Jeong.”

“I’m glad,” Yunho says. Wooyoung can tell he’s happy from the upward curve of his lips, but his eyes keep flitting nervously over the wide expanse. Wooyoung rememberers how long he spent choosing this specific planet, just the right size and not trashed enough to make the environment toxic. The amount of painstaking detail he put into making sure it’s safe. 

Wooyoung trusts him, and he wishes Yunho would trust himself.

“C’mon, tell me about that nerd shit you like with the moons,” Wooyoung says, grabbing Yunho’s hand and dragging him forwards.

Yunho cracks a smile at this. “Between the two of us, you’re definitely the nerd.” 

“Yeah, right.”

“That’s Crescent and that’s Illusion.” Yunho’s eyes light up and he points first to the larger, then the smaller. “Their rotation cycles are supposed to sync up only once every thousand years.” 

“This must be a good luck sign.” 

If Yunho catches the irony, he doesn’t react at all. Instead, he smiles, eyes still glued to the moons. “They’re beautiful, right?” 

Beautiful is...one way to describe them.

The moons hanging in the sky are bloated and yellowed and swollen. They’re fat and droop under their own weight in a way that looks deeply  _ wrong _ in a way Wooyoung can’t put to words. They look like the sores that signal the first stage of infection, filled with pus and blood until they burst. 

Yunho’s the one who ends up finding it. It’s quite inconspicuous, really, a sort of stairwell entrance type thing leading downwards. Wooyoung switches on his eye scope’s night vision and peers into the dark tunnel.

“I think it’s a subway station!”

Yunho looks like he’s already regretting bringing it up. “Wooyoungie, you know we can’t.”

“And  _ you _ know we can,” Wooyoung retorts. “Please? Please please please? We’ll be real quick!”

“...Fine,” 

“Don’t even pretend like you’re not excited either.” Wooyoung steps into the entrance. Yunho laughs like it’s been surprised out of him. It’s Wooyoung’s favourite sound in the entire universe. Not even the sound a ship makes after a successful rebooting can top it.

Wooyoung flicks on the flashlight on his eye scope and moves his head around so Yunho can see. The walls are almost unscathed and glitter silver under the beam of light. He closes his good eye and looks through his other one. Under natural light, they probably are white or beige. He can’t be certain of anything through the way the scope paints everything green, tough. 

Bits of debris that turn into slumped bodies when they merge into his peripheral vision form random piles along the tunnel. Wooyoung moves forwards a few paces, notes the track of some sort dividing the space into two and the blocky shapes of train carts further down.

Then, something glints back the light of his flashlight. Something that doesn’t glint like the way metal or plastic does. Wooyoung shrugs and continues. 

Wrong move. A second later, he hears some sort of guttural, gravelly growl.

“Alright, Jeong, what are you doing.” Yunho would never, never make a sound like that, not even if he’s held at gunpoint. But if Wooyoung can convince himself then maybe he could start breathing again-

Something latches onto his shoulder and a surprised noise forces its way out of his throat, even as he pulls himself free and reaches for the gun tucked in his pocket. The roamer has staggers, as if confused. It’s wearing a tattered jean jacket and has brown hair hanging in clumped strings. Its eyes lock with Wooyoung’s, and for a second he swears he can see  _ something _ there. He lowers his arm and ignores Yunho’s frantic voice, calling out his name.

Then the roamer lunges.

It latches onto Wooyoung’s waist and bites down on the fabric of his jacket. Thrashing blindly, Wooyoung aims the gun in the roamer’s general direction and squeezes the trigger as many times as his trembling fingers possibly can. His ears ring. He isn’t sure if it’s from the gunshots or the terror coursing through his veins. 

Through the haze that’s creeping into his vision, Wooyoung sees the roamer jerk back once. Twice. Then, as if nothing had happened at all, it snaps back up, jaws stretching unnaturally wide and bearing down on him. He’s pointing the gun at its face and he’s firing as many times as he can, why isn’t it going down-

“Duck!” 

The zombie’s head bounces more than it rolls. Its headless body twitches, then falls backwards, hitting the ground with a dull thud. Wooyoung stares at it, unable to comprehend the fact that not a second ago this thing was somehow alive. Or, well, not exactly alive. Undead. Bile rises to Wooyoung’s throat. 

Morbid curiosity forbids him from looking away. He feels like a kid again, gazing into the blank and animalistic eyes of a captured roamer and unable to break the staring competition.

A sharp, sensitive sound echoes through the hall. Wooyoung has to clench his teeth to make himself not physically jump at it, and turns to see Yunho has dropped his knife.

“I’m so, so sorry, I should have been more careful,” Yunho rushes out, eyes huge and full of guilt. Like it even is his fault;  _ Wooyoung _ is the one who had insisted on coming down here.

Wooyoung drops the empty gun into his bag and takes a deep breath to steady himself. What kind of cliche bullshit was ‘gun runs out of ammo before he could get a good shot in’? It’s not his first brush with death, and unfortunately it probably won’t be the last. He’s okay. No need to get all worked up.

“Don’t apologize. I’m okay.” Wooyoung picks the knife off of the ground and grimaces at the feeling of guts against his skin. He wipes it clean on his already gut-splattered jacket. Sticking out the handle for Yunho to grab, he flashes the other a grin he hopes will be reassuring. 

Except, Yunho doesn’t take back the knife. He reaches out slightly but then shrinks back in on himself, face pale and bloodless.

“Okay? Wooyoungie, you could have, you almost-” Yunho’s voice cracks and then Wooyoung sees his eyes overflow and tears spill down his cheeks.  _ Fuck _ .

(It’s not even the first time Wooyoung’s made Yunho cry. He promised himself, he fucking promised to only make Yunho happy.)

“Hey, hey, Yunho.” Wooyoung can hear the way desperation grates his words and makes them harsh. A snap instead of a plead. “I, shit, Yunho, _ look at me _ .” 

His words don’t have the intended effect. Wooyoung takes Yunho’s hands and places them on his cheeks, hoping the contact would… He doesn’t know exactly what, but he needs Yunho to touch him, to be certain he is tangible and  _ here _ .

Yunho’s hands feel warm against his face and cold against his hands. He can feel how much Yunho’s trembling. After a while, he chokes out, “I’m sorry.” 

What Wooyoung wants to do is beg Yunho not to cry, tell him how lovely he is and how he doesn’t deserve any of this. Instead, he says, “It’s okay, Yunho. I’m okay.” 

“You’re okay. You’re okay you’re okayokayokay.” Yunho repeats. It sounds like he’s mostly saying it to himself. He gives a shaky exhale, and when his breath hits Wooyoung he realizes how close they are. How close their lips are.

Yunho pulls back after a few heartbeats and wipes at his cheeks, giving a breathy, choked laugh. Fresh tears streak down his face, glimmering trails that he smudges. “God, I’m such a mess. Sorry.” 

  
  
  


“Stop that.” Wooyoung frowns. He gives in to his urges and leans in to swipe a thumb under Yunho’s eyes, brushing away stray tears. “Stop apologizing.” 

Wooyoung takes one of Yunho’s hands and they make their way out of the subway station. Once they reach the stairwell, Wooyoung says, “Let’s go find the fighter jet. It’d make a great hotel room, don’t you think?”

Yunho laughs at this. He still sounds shaken, but the tension has drained out of his shoulders. He’ll be okay. Wooyoung reminds himself that even though Yunho cares too much he’s strong. Tells himself that worrying will only make him say something he regrets and he needs to calm down, because he can worry and beat himself up tomorrow. Right now he just wants to focus on Yunho’s warm and the feel of their clasped hands. Wants to put his ear against Yunho’s chest and hear his heartbeat.

Wooyoung doesn’t like to think of this as the end of the world. Because as long as Yunho is alive and beside him and breathing, his world is whole and complete.


End file.
